Ecuador's railway in the sky

Anthony Lambert takes a trip on Ecuador's new tourist train, from the coastal
plain into the 'Avenue of Volcanoes'.

"The last time I travelled on this line was in the 1980s, riding on the tender of a bright red steam locomotive. It was one of the things travellers to South America did then. Such antics were ended by an unfortunate contretemps between a wire and the neck of a Japanese roof-rider"Photo: ANTHONY LAMBERT

Remember those US newsreels of whistlestop tours showing the would-be president waving at voters from an open balcony at the back of a train? I’ve just had a taste of what those tours must have been like. I was on the rear veranda of the world’s latest tourist train as it inched its way past crowds of cheering locals, amid a cacophony of police and locomotive whistles, in the Ecuadorean town of Milagro.

I had joined the first eastbound departure of the Tren Crucero (“cruise train”) from Ecuador’s largest city, the port of Guayaquil, preferring a gradual acclimatisation to Andean altitudes during the four-day ascent to journey’s end in the highland capital, Quito. Travelling in that direction also provides a greater sense of climax: the train climbs from the lacklustre coastal plain into the mountains, stopping among what the Prussian geographer Alexander von Humboldt called in 1802 “the Avenue of Volcanoes”.

The last time I travelled on the “G&Q” line was in the 1980s, riding on the tender of a bright red Philadelphia-built steam locomotive. It was one of the things travellers to South America did then, enjoying the drama of the high Andes from the roof of either a steam-hauled carriage or a bus-like autoferro. Such antics, enough to induce apoplexy in health-and-safety officials, were ended by an unfortunate contretemps between a wire and the neck of a Japanese roof-rider. The investment-starved railway was hopelessly uncompetitive with journey times over new roads and had lost most of its traffic by 2008 when President Correa committed $245 million to rebuilding the railway for tourism.

The scale of the railway’s transformation was evident from the moment I arrived at Guayaquil station. In the 1980s the wooden building seemed on the point of collapse; I joined waiting passengers in a smart new two-storey waiting hall, with a film showing the reconstruction of the moribund railway, starting with scenes of dereliction and ending with the presidential reopening. Every station along the line has been attractively restored, some with cafés and shops and meeting places for local people as well as passengers. So the delight on the faces of the waving Ecuadoreans was for having their railway back as well as a new train.

A jet-black steam locomotive – one of seven being overhauled – eased us out of the station and along a palm-lined road to begin our sedate 280-mile journey. Locals with raised mobiles to record the novel sight and sound filled every doorway and window in the riotous concrete jumble of the suburbs.

As the train struck out across the delta of the Guayas River, reedy marshes gave way to a mosaic of rice paddies watched over by egrets, fields of sugar cane patrolled by hawks and red-headed vultures. Split-cane houses roofed with corrugated iron stood on spindly poles to protect them from flooding and rats.

Time to explore the air-conditioned train. Built in Spain, the four-coach Tren Crucero has two cars of tables each flanked by a pair of armchairs. The friendly and efficient crew use the bar car to serve hot and cold drinks and local tapas, and there is a small gift shop and a hockey-stick-shaped banquette overlooking a picture window. The observation car has more banquettes, a section of four two-person sofas and an open platform at the end. Books about Ecuador’s natural history are scattered around, and fresh flowers add splashes of colour. All meals are taken off the train and overnight stays are in hotels.

Every day there is at least one off-train excursion using a shadowing coach or taking an easy walk. Our first took us to the cacao plantation of San Rafael. A machete sliced into a red oblong pod to enable us to taste the sweet white pulp that surrounds the beans before they are fermented and dried and sent off to make chocolate. A machete was also required for an atmospheric walk into the cloud forest that covers the lower slopes of the Andes, on which we learnt of the numerous uses of plants. Best known is the toquilla palm, which is woven into the misnamed Panama hat. The density of luxuriant growth beside the narrow switchback path and the unfamiliar birdsong made it easy to believe that Ecuador’s cloud forests are considered the world’s richest hotspots for biodiversity, with 15 to 17 per cent of plant species and almost 20 per cent of birds.

Cloud enveloped our departure the following day from Bucay, to begin one of the toughest railway climbs in the world. In just 50 miles the railway ascends from 970ft above sea level to nearly 10,700ft. It does this by gradients at the limit of adhesion even for a powerful diesel locomotive and by one of the great railway wonders of the world, the Devil’s Nose zigzag. The mountain known as Pistishi or the Condor’s Nest by the local Indians blocked the passage of the railway. Its shape and the difficulties it caused gave rise to the name that has stuck – La Nariz del Diablo.

Up its nearly perpendicular cliffs a ledge for the railway was hacked and blasted by the largely Jamaican and Ecuadorian workforce under the guidance of a Virginian West Point graduate, Major John A Harman. By 1901 trains were able to charge up the first arm of the switchback before reversing up the second and again changing direction for the third arm, facing the “right” way.

Long before the drama of this climb, we had burst through the cloud into the raspingly clear light that delineates the Andes so acutely. From Bucay the railway runs alongside the Chanchán River, whose raging waters destroyed long sections of the line before reconstruction on a less vulnerable alignment. The wooded valley gradually narrowed, forcing the railway over frequent river crossings to find a route between the slopes. The arc of a waterfall filled a shaded ravine, and high above the line grassland stretched towards distant summits.

The train scythed a path between the two-storey houses lining the main street of Huigra, where a statue commemorates Eloy Alfaro, the president whose determination created the railway. The diesel growled up to Sibambe in the shadow of the Devil’s Nose as we congregated on the open veranda for the thrill of the climb, to a chorus of camera shutters.

Two great horseshoe bends lifted the line into Alausi, dominated by a colossal statue of St Peter. The height of the eucalyptus trees imported from Australia in the 19th century gradually lessened as we climbed the Cordillera Occidental range, pausing to visit a Belgian-supported educational centre in Guamote and the oldest church in Ecuador built by the Spaniards, in 1534 at Balbanera: all dark stone, tiny windows and gaudy Madonnas.

As our train reversed into Riobamba station, we watched the light fade on the crown of snow on the dormant summit of Chimborazo (20,560ft), the mountain depicted in one of America’s most famous paintings, The Heart of the Andes by Frederic Church, and first climbed by Edward Whymper in 1880. The conquest placed him closer to the sun than anyone before him, since Chimborazo lies on the equatorial bulge, making it farther from the Earth’s centre than even Mount Everest.

Appropriately, the station for Chimborazo is the highest on the G&Q, and it was in the dormitory station house of Urbina at 11,910ft that we met 69-year-old Baltazar Ushca. His brown wind-scoured face spoke of a lifetime on the mountain; since the age of 15, like his father and grandfather before him, he has used donkeys to carry ice blocks to juice vendors in local villages and towns.

Winding through landscapes reminiscent of the Scottish lowlands, we dropped down into the deep basin filled by the city of Ambato, rebuilt after it was eveled by an earthquake in 1949. In the hills above the town we admired organic and Fair Trade roses grown in polytunnels for North America, Russia and Spain.

Our final night was in one of the country’s most historic haciendas. The destruction of the Spanish Armada was eight years away when Hacienda Cienega was built in 1580, and its dark rooms and corridors overlooking the courtyard garden are redolent of times when power rested with a landed elite. Visitors with a suitable prefix – Marshal, Count or Don – were welcomed. I slept in the suite once occupied by Baron Humboldt while he was studying nearby Cotopaxi in 1802. In the ante-room, chaises longue and a round table stood beneath a stone vault, and the window was aligned with one of the country’s oldest avenues of eucalyptus, the upper branches meeting overhead like a Gothic nave.

It’s pot luck whether the vagaries of mountain weather allow a clear view of Cotopaxi’s symmetrical white cone. The forest of Canadian pines covering the lower slopes of the national park was wreathed in mist as our bus climbed to the highest point for vehicles, far beyond the tree line where wild horses roam and volcanic ash supports a mass of yellow, red and purple flowers. The cloud parted to give partial glimpses of the refugio where climbers scaling the 19,460ft peak can wait for the weather. It was not until we were back in the train and running along a hillside shelf in the Valley of the Volcanoes that the sky cleared to give us a perfect view of the mountain that inspired another of Church’s most famous paintings, Cotopaxi.

Our journey through seven of the country’s nine climatic zones came to an end in the well-restored station compound. It’s a measure of the regard people have for the railway and their station that here – in the oldest capital of the Americas and a World Heritage Site – Quiteños voted it their favourite building. President Correa will have been gratified.

Rainbow Tours (020 7666 1260; rainbowtours.co.uk) offers the Tren Crucero (trenecuador.com) as part of an 11-day “Scenic Ecuador by train” itinerary with Metropolitan Touring, priced from £2,985 per person, taking in visits to the market town of Otavalo, a journey aboard the “Tren de Libertad” through the northern highlands and a private city tour in Quito.

Included in the price are return flight from London; four nights’ accommodation at Casa Gangotena, two nights at Hacienda Pinsaqui near Otavalo and one night at Oro Verde in Guayaquil; daily breakfast; full board in hotels and haciendas during the Tren Crucero journey; and transfers. The Tren Crucero departs from Quito on July 2, 16 and 30 and on August 13 and 27.

From where to where? From Guayaquil, the country’s chief seaport, to the capital, Quito, or vice versa.

How far? 273 miles.

How long? Four days.

How much? £647 (introductory offer) to £825.

Buffet or banquet? Generous provision of drinks and tapas on the train, with meals of good to excellent quality in hotels, haciendas or restaurants.

Sitting comfortably? Plenty of choice in seating areas, though many passengers spend long periods on the open veranda. There are lockers on the train for valuables.

Time to read The Ecuador Reader: History, Culture, Politics, edited by Carlos de la Torre and Steve Striffler (Duke University Press), 48 essays on the country from pre-Colombian times. The Panama Hat Trail (National Geographic Books) by Tom Miller explains why the eponymous piece of headgear should really be “the Ecuador Hat” – and much more about the country.

Time to listen to ¡Una tonadilla nueva!: Baroque Music from Ecuador by Ensemble Villancico, 17th-century vocal music, delightfully fusing Latin American and Spanish traditions. For traditional wind and pipe instruments, try Cóndor de Los Andes by Mallku de Los Andes.

When to go Tren Crucero departures are scheduled between June and early September and between December and February.

Make sure you pack Sunscreen and a hat for tours or stops along the way.